Knot In The Specs – Lucid Dream

Doubled over under her indoor parasol with one gloved hand clamped hard over her mouth, her shoulders shake helplessly with it. And she is not even quiet about it. She is wheezing it out loud to every corner of the colonnade, between gulps of laughter and not caring who hears. “I knew it,” she gasps. “I knew it. The little lunatic really did fall out of another world.” She wipes at one eye.

“Clear-eyed. Stone sober. Completely out of his mind. Best thing I have seen all year.” She means every single word of it, and she does not lower her voice once. Every priest in earshot has gone the color of a fish belly. The word orgasm. Shouted. In the open air of the Temple of the Moon.

Over rows of the wounded. I can see at least three of them deciding to pretend they misheard. And behind me, Fenrikael drags one huge hand down his own face. I do not have to turn around to know he is doing it. But I also feel the other thing under the exasperation. The helpless predator grin he cannot fully smother, because his ridiculous mate just screamed something filthy in a holy place and meant it as a spell and some deep wolfish part of him is appalled while the rest of him is so far gone it is not even pretending anymore.

Then the spell fires. Light comes out of me. Not from my hands. From all of me. From the thin pale frame Valerius sneered at, a vast silver wave rolls out across the infirmary like a tide coming in. Not loud. Not violent. Warm. It washes over every cot in the colonnade at once.

A great gentle flood of silver light and where it passes the bodies change. Broken legs straighten under their sheets, the crooked angles sliding true. A long gash on a paladin’s forearm closes from end to end like a seam being sewn shut — fast and clean — leaving skin behind it so smooth there is not even a scar to mark where the wound was.

Bone finds bone and knits. Torn muscle weaves itself back into something whole. Dozens of men who were laid out and leaking a minute ago go quiet, then still. One cot after another, they begin to push themselves slowly upright. Hands move over skin that is suddenly unbroken.

Their faces are caught somewhere between terror and the simple animal relief of pain leaving a body. It takes me one cast. One. I have not knelt and I have not chanted.

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations included in published reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents described in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book contains explicit sexual content, strong language, and mature themes. Intended for readers 18 and older. OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Interlude 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Epilogue OceanofPDF.com T PROLOGUE E L L I O T he tent flap drops shut behind us and the whole camp goes quiet at once.

My back hits the wooden post that holds the tent up. The wolf I love is two feet in front of me with someone else’s blood still drying on his cheekbone and his chest still heaving from the kill. The man who promised me a kind first day of training has not been in his face for the last four seconds.

I was carried in here over his shoulder like a sack of grain. My feet got set down on the furs. The small space between us has just been closed and the panic in his face has traded itself for something flatter and more dangerous. Like a soldier closing a visor. His hand drops to my hip. He draws my knife. The one he spent six whole days teaching me to hold.

“Hold still, trainee.” “Fen.” “You have returned from combat. Standard procedure requires an inspection for hidden injury. I intend to be thorough.” “You cannot be serious.” “Hold still.” The flat of the cold blade slides under the seam of my shirt. He does not cut me. What he cuts is the stitching. One precise line at a time. Each pass parts the thread with a faint crisp sound and a little more of my chest opens to the cold tent air.

Right behind the cold comes his breath. Hot as a banked forge. The two temperatures together make me shudder hard enough to rattle my teeth.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 96bcb92868c21203
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,689,363 bytes (1.611 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 322
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 382.46 minutes
• Total Words: 76,492
• Total Characters: 402,768
• Average Words per Page: 237.55
• Average Characters per Page: 1250.83

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